A college football playoff would be fun to fill out a bracket, give fodder for ESPN talking heads and supply a couple more college football games to watch in January (which is never a bad thing); but a playoff system in football would destroy collegiate athletics. In the Bowl Championship Series era it is increasingly obvious that money is the driving force in collegiate athletics. While a playoff system would appeal to the fans and small-conference teams, the fact is that many teams would find their athletic budgets harshly cut due to the devaluation and end of bowl games.
Typical arguments against playoffs merely hide the fact that college sports are ruled by money. There likely would be no drop-off of athlete GPAs. Athletes would just have to work the same way they do for months for another two weeks, maybe three. Any single college football game would also not be diminished. MSU would have still lost to Louisiana Tech to start the season whether the goal was the Sugar Bowl, the BCS Championship or the playoffs.
NCAA Division I-FCS, Division II, III, and NAIA all have playoffs to determine their champions. The FCS playoffs started in 1972 much like the BCS. Prior to 1972, the NCAA College Subdivision champion, as it was known then, was voted on by the Associated Press after four major bowls were played: the Camellia Bowl, Pecan Bowl, Rice Bowl and Boardwalk Bowl. None of these bowls have been played since 1980. Numerous other lesser bowls died out the same time; the popular Pioneer, Refrigerator and Glass Bowls were all defunct by 1975. In fact the 1980 Camellia Bowl, which also hosted the National Title game, was the last time that bowl was used in reference to a post-season game which featured two teams ranked in the top 10 of the AP Division II poll. This same pattern repeated in the other three divisions and surely would be repeated in what is now the Bowl Subdivision.
The playoffs would generate the most interest and thus would generate the most money. Teams in the playoffs would make even more money than the teams which make the BCS.
The rules would, on paper, appear to make college football more fair. However, in actuality, the practice would widen the gap between the great and the mediocre sports programs. Most schools have only one, maybe two, sports other than football that make money, so cutting into the profit of football affects all other sports.
Mississippi State’s athletic program has a budget of about $25 million. That is over $35 million less than the average SEC team. In order to compete, MSU cannot afford to take a cut into that money. MSU, by virtue of being a member of the SEC, will earn a share of the SEC’s nearly $40 million in bowl tie-in money. If that money were cut into, MSU would find it harder and harder to compete in its own conference. While the SEC does nearly equally share its wealth, other conferences do not have this precedence, and under a playoff system if a program like Iowa State or Northwestern didn’t find football success, it would start to feel its athletics budgets shrinking and find it harder and harder to compete with Texas or Ohio State in all sports. This progressive disadvantage would only be seen as a result of a football playoff since far fewer teams would for the payout of a football playoff and much more money would be on the line than any other sport.
The 65-team basketball tournament features over 19 percent of the 339-member Division I basketball classification. That would require 23 teams from the 120-member Division I FBS subdivision. Nearly all college football playoffs have proposed a four, eight, 12 or 16 team field. Outside the playoff proper, consolation post-season is hardly a consideration. The NIT pays out less than 2 percent per game compared to the NCAA basketball tournament. Any post-season football game that was part of a route to become national champion would slash its payouts. It has been 30 years since the end of the bowl era of lower division college football, and now the only post-season non-playoff games that exist concern conferences which do not participate in national title playoffs. It is now playoffs or nothing.
Thus far in arguing how the monetary side of a playoff crushes small programs in big conferences, the biggest issue of all has been ignored: the National Champion will be no more worthy of that title. Nine teams finished the 2007 football season with two losses (as did National Champion LSU) or fewer and none finished undefeated. Which of those teams would be left out of an eight-team playoff? Similarly, which teams that finished with three or even four losses get added to make a 12 or 16 team playoff?
Paul Kimbrough is a senior majoring in biological sciences. He can be reached at
[email protected].